Anti-poverty activist and scholar Peter Edelman during a recent lecture at Northwestern University Law School sponsored by the National Public Housing Museum. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

It will take “a national groundswell of concern if we are going to make the progress we need on poverty,” said Georgetown Law Center Professor and author Peter Edelman during a lecture hosted by the National Public Housing Museum at Northwestern University Law School, 375 E. Chicago Ave., on October 10. Discussing the “growing chasm between America’s wealthy and poor,” Edelman said that “America has the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world,” with 46 million people living below the poverty line, a situation that could cause problems in the future. “Our democracy is in danger,” he said.
Edelman, faculty director at the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy in Washington, D.C., is an antipoverty advocate and former legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who served as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Clinton administration but resigned from his position to protest President Clinton’s support of welfare reform. The free public lecture, based on Edleman’s latest book, “So Rich, So Poor: Why it’s So Hard to End Poverty in America,” was part of the National Public Housing Museum’s “Profiles in Color: Race, Place and Identity Series” funded by the Ford Foundation and the Boeing company. Read more »

Former President William J. Clinton bedazzled a crowd of supporters for the Democratic Party at the “Vote Illinois Rally” held at the Palmer Hilton Grand Ballroom in downtown Chicago on Oct. 26.

Speaking like a person running for political office, Clinton bashed the Republican contenders across the country in his lengthy speech. And he urged the people in attendance at the rally to vote and tell others to vote all across the Democratic ticket in Illinois on Nov. 2.

Former President William J. Clinton talking about why people should vote for Democratic candidate on Election Day, as candidate for US Senator Alex Giannoulus (left) and US congressional candidate Dan Seals, looks on during the "Illinois Vote Rally" at the Palmer House Grand Ballroom in downtown Chicago, on October 26, 2010. Photo by Mary C. Johns